


The Afghan Sun

by panickedbee



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Guilt, Internalized Homophobia, John in Afghanistan, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:26:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9234905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickedbee/pseuds/panickedbee
Summary: John doesn't have nightmares about the war anymore. Not in most nights. But in some nights, in the darkest of nights, he dreams of what went wrong.“John. What is it this man does to you?”





	

“I have to!”

“Oh, you have to? Why do you have to? Because they tell you to? Why are you always acting like you’re someone else’s little puppet?”

“I don’t!”

“You always did.”

Harry was certainly right. And because she was only a product of his own nightmare induced imagination, she knew best, of course. John didn’t even know anymore, couldn’t know, if she had said these words to him once or if he had had this conversation in his own head so many times already that it became his reality. So she was right. He always did what would keep others away from his wounds, held them at a safe distance. After seeing what being herself had meant for Harry, he had decided to be someone else. Someone who was only attracted to what would not give him strange looks when he walked through the streets. Then he had decided to go to war. To walk through the desert. Alone.

The sand was hot beneath his feet. His shoes were heavy, separating his body from the fire. It all burned. When he tried to look past the sun, he saw the world drowning in flames behind his eyes. Dried blood clung to his hands, his uniform, painted across his face in sprinkles. None of the blood was his own. He was lucky. He could hear his sister’s voice speaking to him in moments like this. She had never wanted him to do this. All she had wanted was peace.

Their father had been a horrible person. A conservative man threatened by all that was different from his own narrow tunnel vision, one who always sang God Save the Queen with pride and commitment in his voice.

John had never wanted to be like him. But he had still gone to the army. Just like his father. A noble occupation, he thought. He had studied medicine first, chosen to heal people with his own hands, and then later chosen to take death in his hands as well. That was what he was, and he had soon learned to accept his contradictions.

His major had admired him for it.

James.

The world shifted as his head wrapped itself around his name, driving him into bits and pieces of a memory and a fantasy intertwined. The blood was washed from his skin, and his skin felt dry and warm against the rippled fabric of another man’s tanktop. His muscles were evident through the single layer of khaki cloth, and John pressed himself against it further. The wall behind him was cold against his bare back, but he, he was so warm.

“John,” James whispered into the darkness. The nights were freezing in Afghanistan, but James’s breath was hot on his neck.

He said his name a few more times, voice growing deeper and heavier with desperation. He needed him. Just as John needed James. And he didn’t want to need him, but oh, he did. He was all alone, stuck in a war behind the trigger and in front of men he had never seen before and was yet meant to shoot down. Yes. He had killed people.

“John?”

His hands trembled in Ella Thompson’s room. Just a second ago, he had let them run over James’s hot skin with steady fingers. Now they were cold and shaking.

“John. What is it this man does to you?”

No. No, no, no. He wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t allowed for him to touch James. It couldn’t last. They couldn’t last.

“Nothing happened between us,” John said, loudly, much more force behind his words than he had intended. “Nothing happens to me.”

“Something happened to you, John. What happened to you after he fell?”

What? Who fell? The only fallen person he knew was … But hadn’t their just talked about…

“Major James Sholto.” Sherlock balanced the name on his tongue.

John looked up and ahead to where he was standing in the middle of 221B Baker Street.

Once Sherlock had spoken, the world shifted to his voice, adjusting to his words. He was wearing the tuxedo from his wedding, holding a glass of champagne in his outstretched hand. It fell from his fingers, shattering into millions of pieces. Distributing like dust.

“Your ex,” he said. He didn’t add anything to it.

“It wasn’t that simple,” said John.

“When is anything ever simple?”

He walked towards him, graceful like he was walking down the aisle. Like he could have him. Like he was deciding to stay this time.

“You want everything to be clever, don’t you?”

“Me?” John asked, taking a step back. He was still wearing his heavy boots, his uniform. Why was he still wearing his uniform?

“I’m not the one who wants everything to be clever, Sherlock!”

“You want me to be clever.”

“Because you are! I don’t want you to be more than you already are.”

“You don’t want me to be dead.”

“Of course I don’t-”

“Don’t turn around.”

A loud shot was piercing his ears. He turned around, looking behind him in concern.

The middle of the desert. He was back in Afghanistan, throat dry, stomach empty. He was hungry as death was hungry. Thirsty like the war craved for its victims.

“Watson!”

But he left James Sholto’s strong hands that tried to hold him closer. Instead he began to run. Run to where the shot had fallen, the figure had fallen in the distance. There was only sand to fight through. His biggest enemy, clinging to his weak limbs and soaking up the blood, soaking it all up. He wobbled through the sound of fired weapons around him, _peng peng peng!_ , and fell to his knees.

_You don’t want me to be dead._

Pale face, dark curls, he was lying there, sleeping and bleeding into the sand that soaked it up, all up. The blood ran across his face like a paintbrush full of water would leave its marks on canvas. Sherlock had always looked more like a piece of art than human. But oh, wasn’t he so very human? Just as he was lying here, bleeding out of his flesh and bones?

John was holding him close, placing two fingers on the pulse point of his neck, but there was nothing. No movement. Tears were streaming down his face and raining down on Sherlock’s; a sorrow they now shared through salt water but only one of them felt. He was wearing his tags, he realised. His dogtags. _John H. Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers._ And then, suddenly, he dropped out of the narrative.

“John!”

He heard him, _him!_ , calling out his name, and as he opened his eyes he saw himself. Saw the sand soaking up his own blood. Saw the red paint glistening in the sunlight, covering his left shoulder in it and replacing skin with bare flesh. He had been shot in Afghanistan, wounded to an extent that would forever change him. Shot, yes, and then the fever came and the freezing came, and it came all at once and felt like dying twice over and over and oh God-

“John.”

A rumble.

He woke with his face wet and pressed into an incredible source of warmth.

“Finally,” the dead man said to him, somewhere very close to him. And he felt him when he talked, as if it was coming from the very insides of his head. As if he wouldn’t be present in his every thought already.

“What happened?” John asked, keeping his eyes closed so that they wouldn’t burn.

He already knew he wasn’t in his own bed. The scent was familiar, the mattress more comfortable beneath his weight. The company perfect and unbelievably stunning, always.

“Nightmare again,” Sherlock explained into the silence. A silence filled with occasional sobs John failed to shove down. But it was fine now. He remembered. It was all fine now.

“Afghanistan?” He added the question softly; a tune his voice fell into more and more often these days.

John nodded into his chest, still pressed against it. “You were dead.”

He feared he would hear another apology from Sherlock. He didn’t need to hear more of them anymore. He had forgiven him a long, long time ago, and he hated that he still dreamed of Sherlock’s regrets and mistakes. It didn’t do any good to anyone, after all.

But Sherlock didn’t apologise. Instead he pressed a kiss to the top of his head. A long one. Until his lips weren’t touching him anymore and he was just inhaling him. It was a calming sensation. John relaxed. He almost fell asleep again before he opened his eyes with a sudden realisation that caught like a gasp in his throat.

_Sherlock Holmes was alive. Sherlock Holmes was his. Only his to keep._

He looked up at him and found a pair of crystal blue eyes looking back, keenly, fascinated as they always were. He had missed those lively eyes. Oh, he felt pierced. Happily pierced by crystal blue, with two tiny freckles on the left, a shimmer of green whenever he blinked. John reached out to let his fingers sink into a mop of soft curls, closed the gap of distance. And kissed him. Kissed him in his bed, in his arms, in his very mind and soul.

Kissing him, he felt, made the core in the centre of his body glow, warm, shining brighter than the Afghan sun. Love, he felt. Love was worth a nightmare or two if he was granted to wake up like this. As long as this was still reality, and any true horrors of his life lay in the past, lay in bad dreams.

Sherlock’s lips were real enough for him to forget the rest of the world. Even the war.


End file.
